As a child, I was carefree and never really paid attention to those around me. I would do the things that I enjoyed most, like playing, dancing freely, and singing loudly. However, as I grew older, I started to experience anxiety and became very self aware. I remember feeling uneasy about my body at the age of 10 when I first began to go through puberty. I disliked the changes my body was going through and felt like I didn’t fit in with other girls my age. I began to compare myself to the women I saw in magazines and on social media, wanting to conform to their beauty standards. I would always ask my mom for new clothes and to straighten my hair so that I could fit in more. My mom would always say no to new clothes because of our financial situation, and she was also very strict about me not straightening my hair. I didn’t understand why at the time, but I later learned that my mom had damaged her hair from straightening it constantly when she immigrated to the United States. She wanted me to appreciate my natural curls and see them as beautiful, which I now do. This experience is just one example of how industries turn our bodies into products, and it is something that millions of people struggle with. Although I still have moments of self-doubt, I have learned to embrace and love my body for what it is.
Unruly Bodies 
Hello. This was very interesting to read. For generations, there has been the “ideal body” for both male and female. In today’s society, this is even more concerning, especially for children and teens, as it is much harder to cope during these intense times trying to have and look like a supermodel. The unrealistic characteristics of each gender aren’t easy to accomplish and/or maintain. But, the body is more than the looks on out the outside for others to view and make opinions about, especially in a “male dominate” world. In the reading titled “Not Just the Reflexive Reflex” by Mary Kosut and Lisa Jean Moore, it quotes “The body is the medium or raw material through which we navigate the world.” Every individual should be happy in their own skin, no matter what the look like as self-love and self-esteem is extremely important for one’s mental health and when that is broken, physical issues can arise as well, such as stomach problems, headaches, not being able to sleep and have poor eating habits. For example, the story about the pregnant man Thomas Beattie, who is a transgender person, he was receiving a lot of media attention, both negative and positive, not on the pregnancy and growing a life inside the human body, but the fact that “she” is a “he” on the outside, but still a “she” on the inside”. The attention and focus was on the wrong issue, but society has us too heavily focused on the body and what it should be and not for what it is. My question is “If this way of thinking continues, will the behavior begin destroy the human body from the outside to the inside as we know it?
I think this is very brave of you to be vunerable and share your experience with us, when I was younger I went through the same thing with clothing and my hair, at first I didn’t like my wavy hair and would straighten it all the time, but now I learned to accept it as beautiful.